


spell it out for me

by asideofourown



Category: Good Omens (TV), Good Omens - Neil Gaiman & Terry Pratchett
Genre: Don't copy to another site, Established Relationship, Fluff, M/M, Marriage Proposal, Post-Canon, Scrabble
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2020-03-13
Updated: 2020-03-13
Packaged: 2021-02-28 20:55:05
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 2,454
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/23123593
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/asideofourown/pseuds/asideofourown
Summary: Crowley’s plan was brilliant.Not that that said much.Allof his plans were brilliant, whether they involved gluing coins to park benches or loosing ducks on businesspeople in the financial district.But this plan was particularly brilliant: Crowley was going to ask Aziraphale to marry him, using something that he knew Aziraphale loved.  It would be perfect.  Or, itwould,if he could find theone blessed thing he needed—With a cry of triumph Crowley spotted the dusty red box he was looking for, pulling it off the shelf with a wide grin.  “Bingo,” he whispered, blowing the dust off the top of the box before setting it carefully down on his bed, pulling the top off.The little plastic letter squares rattled against the cardboard, and Crowley quickly counted through them to make sure they were all there.  It had been, after all, a good long while since he had played Scrabble.[Crowley's creative proposal to Aziraphale doesn't go exactly as planned]
Relationships: Aziraphale/Crowley (Good Omens)
Comments: 69
Kudos: 397





	spell it out for me

**Author's Note:**

> This is based on a prompt from [Ecchima](https://https://ecchima.tumblr.com/), thanks for letting me write about it! Writing some nice fluff was a lovely pick-me-up :D
> 
> Enjoy!

Crowley’s plan was brilliant.

Not that that said much. _All_ of his plans were brilliant, whether they involved gluing coins to park benches or loosing ducks on businesspeople in the financial district.

But this plan was _particularly_ brilliant: Crowley was going to ask Aziraphale to marry him, using something that he knew Aziraphale loved.It would be _perfect_.Or, it would, if he could find the _one_ _blessed thing he needed—_

Crowley muttered a few choice four letter words under his breath as he rooted around in the closet where he kept all his old board games and a small stash of embarrassing books.After knocking no less than three packs of cards and a cribbage board onto the floor, Crowley snapped his fingers and the long-since-burnt-out lightbulb on the ceiling flickered on.With a cry of triumph Crowley spotted the dusty red box he was looking for, pulling it off the shelf with a wide grin.“Bingo,” he whispered, blowing the dust off the top of the box before setting it carefully down on his bed, pulling the top off.

The little plastic letter squares rattled against the cardboard, and Crowley quickly counted through them to make sure they were all there.It had been, after all, a good long while since he had played Scrabble.More to the point, the last time he had used this particular game he and Aziraphale had been rather extraordinarily drunk, so it wouldn’t have been at all surprising if some of the letters were missing, lost to the dusty labyrinth of Aziraphale’s shop.

After checking that everything was in order, Crowley sat down on the edge of the bed and closed his eyes, concentrating on his miracle.Carefully, he miracled each of the letters that he would need, making sure they would all make it into his hand.

That done, Crowley dropped to his knees and rummaged around under his bed before pulling out a cardboard box.Inside the box was a shopping bag, and inside that was a Tupperware almost entirely wrapped in duct tape.Crowley rattled the Tupperware and then pulled the duct tape off, removing the top and pulling out a small velvet box. One could never be too careful when hiding the preparation for a long-coming and romantic proposal from one’s significant other, especially when one’s significant other was an incredibly clever and also slightly nosy angel who _knew_ that one had a secret stash of embarrassing books but hadn’t managed to find it yet. He smiled almost involuntarily, rubbing one thumb over the top of the box, and then tucked the box in his pocket.That done, he got to his feet, packed up his doctored box of Scrabble, and left his flat with a spring in his step.

It was getting dark and drizzling just enough to be annoying by the time Crowley got to Aziraphale’s bookshop, and Crowley dashed, undignified, from his car to the door with the Scrabble box under his arm.“Aziraphale!” he called as he burst in the door, making the bell tinkle wildly.“You around?”

“In the back!” Aziraphale replied.Crowley smiled fondly, snagging a dictionary off one of Aziraphale’s shelves as he went, and wandered into the back room.“Hello, dearest,” Aziraphale said a little distractedly from where he was sitting at his desk and poking with agonizing slowness at the keyboard of his computer.

“Whatcha doing?” Crowley asked, sidling over and casually leaning against the desk.

Aziraphale glanced up, offering him a smile.“Taxes, my dear.’Tis the season, after all.”

Crowley snorted at that, even as he leaned in and gave Aziraphale a quick kiss on the forehead.“I don’t think that’s the season most humans are excited about when they say that,” he said.

Aziraphale chuckled.“I suppose not.”He reached up, brushing Crowley’s damp bangs out of his face.“My, how hard is it raining?”

“Not that hard,” Crowley grumbled, doing a quick miracle to fix his hair.

“A good day to stay in, then,” Aziraphale said decisively.“I could use a break from the excitement of my taxes.What brings you here, darling?”

Crowley held up the box and the dictionary in his hand, grinning.“Fancy a game?”

Aziraphale all but lit up.“Oh, that would be lovely!”He eyed the dictionary dubiously.“I don’t know if we need that, though, dear, given that we precede the English language.”

“You don’t think so?” Crowley said, raising an eyebrow even as he set the dictionary down on the desk.“Because I remember _last_ time, after we agreed that we wouldn’t need a dictionary, _someone_ insisted that selfie wasn’t a word.”

Aziraphale sniffed.“My dear, ‘selfie’ most definitely is _not_ a word.I would tend to agree with that _someone.”_

“It’s in the Oxford English Dictionary, angel,” Crowley said with a shit-eating grin.

“Given that I was there when the original was written, I rather think I would know,“ Aziraphale started, clearly enjoying himself.

Crowley laughed.“Alright, no selfies. We can ban modern slang. Want to play, though?”

“I’ll get the wine,” Aziraphale said with a bright smile, standing and planting a kiss on Crowley’s cheek before moving past him.

Crowley cleared the coffee table in the back room while Aziraphale rooted around in his wine store, setting up the game and taking his customary seat on the sofa.The only downside of facing each other down in Scrabble, he thought as he absently touched the small box in his pocket to make sure it was still there, was that he and Aziraphale couldn’t cuddle while they played.He quickly pulled his hand out of his pocket and laced his fingers together when Aziraphale returned with a bottle of wine and two glasses, the picture of innocence.

Aziraphale smiled as he poured for them both and then sat down in his armchair.“Shall we draw letters?” he asked, and Crowley wordlessly offered him the lid of the box, where he had dumped all the tiles.

Aziraphale rolled his eyes and miracled a little pouch (tartan-patterned, of course, but Crowley couldn’t find it in himself to complain.He was far too filled with giddy, nervous excitement— in a few hours he would be an engaged man-shaped being!) and dumped the letters in before drawing one.“Ah!” he exclaimed with a smile.“C.Go ahead, dear.”

Crowley fished around in the letter pouch before drawing an F.“Go ahead, then, angel,” he said, relaxing back against the couch.

Aziraphale drew his letters, waited for Crowley to do the same, and then laid down the first word with a satisfied smile.“Borne.Shall I keep score?”

“Of course, angel,” Crowley said with a grin.“What’s the fun, otherwise?”

Aziraphale miracled himself a pad and wrote both of their names at the top in his meticulous handwriting before noting down his word and score.“Go ahead, Crowley,” he said, looking up once he was done.

Crowley licked his lips, a little nervous, and then put down a B over Aziraphale’s E.

“Be?” Aziraphale said slowly, blinking in surprise.“There’s nothing more… complex you can do, my dear?”

“Be,” Crowley repeated firmly.“Your turn, angel.”He leaned forward, eyes fixed on the board.

“If you insist,” Aziraphale murmured.He hummed thoughtfully, considering his letters, and then laid down the word ‘nearly’ coming off his N.

Crowley exhaled, relieved, and quickly put an M by the Y.“My,” he said firmly, glancing up to make eye contact.

To his mild surprise, Aziraphale looked a bit put off.“Crowley,” he said slowly.“If you don’t want to play Scrabble, you don’t have to indulge me. Although you were the one to suggest it, so I don't quite know why...”He pursed his lips.“You know I don’t _really_ mind if you want to use modern words like… _selfie_.”He couldn’t quite hide his shudder, the theatrical bastard, and _heaven_ did Crowley love him.

“No, Aziraphale, I want to play,” he insisted, and then spread his hands innocently.“Just bad luck with the, uh, letters.S’all, promise.Go ahead.”

Aziraphale eyed him, still frowning slightly, and then nodded.“Alright.”He glanced down at his letters, rearranging a few tiles, and then hummed before triumphantly putting down an S, an T, and a U to spell ‘stub’ with his first B.

Crowley muttered a curse, looking down at the letters on his track spelling out HUS AND, and then at the now unavailable B on the board.Thwarted. _Blast_.He’d have to change his plans, figure out another way to spell out his proposal.It couldn’t be too hard, there were still plenty of letters left.

Proposing through Scrabble proceeded to be, in fact, _quite_ hard.

The problem was that Aziraphale was very well-read, Crowley decided after his third attempt was blocked on only the second word of his question.The angel knew too many words, could shift the letters around in his head too easily to unintentionally prevent Crowley from spelling out what he wanted to say.

Aziraphale’s intelligence was one of the many things that Crowley loved about him, to be fair— he loved the way his angel spoke, loved the way he could use words to get his way, whether that was justifying the Arrangement or nitpicking the specifics of the Great Plan or convincing Crowley that he should really be the one to pick up their dinner.But _damn_ , if it didn’t throw a wrench in Crowley’s plans for a grand romantic gesture.

“Marzipan!” Aziraphale cried triumphantly, placing all of his letters down off the M that Crowley had been going to use to spell out ‘marry.’At some point around Crowley’s fifth two or three letter word, Aziraphale had evidently decided that he didn’t have many qualms about leaving him in the dust.Their points reflected that, and any other day Crowley might have minded how horribly he was losing, if he wasn’t distracted by the weight of the small velvet box in his pocket and his quickly diminishing letter tiles.

“Go ahead, dear,” Aziraphale said with a smile, nudging Crowley’s foot with his under the table.He took a sip of wine.“What will it be?”

Crowley looked down at his letters, considering his prospects.He had down on the board ‘will’ and ‘you,’ branching off some of Aziraphale’s words, but there were no more Ms available to spell out ‘marry.’Desperate times called for desperate measures.

Silently apologizing, Crowley picked up one of his E tiles and miracled it into an M before quickly laying down his word.“Marry,” he said quietly, looking up at Aziraphale.He had taken off his sunglasses several turns back, and he widened his eyes significantly.

Aziraphale gazed back at him, his brow furrowed.“Crowley,” he said softly.“Why are you doing this?”

He looked _upset,_ and Crowley immediately scrambled to say, “Angel, if you don’t want to get—“

“Why bother to ask me to play, if you’re not going to try and then you’re going to cheat?” Aziraphale interrupted.

Crowley blinked.“…Huh?”

“There are only two Ms in the game, Crowley, I can tell yours is miracled,” Aziraphale said.He sounded frustrated.“I don’t understand, are you upset about something?Is playing two and three letter words a protest against my moratorium on modern slang?”

“No!” Crowley gasped.He raked his fingers through his hair and then said seriously, “Aziraphale, read all the words I’ve played.”

Aziraphale frowned slightly, but picked up the scoring pad and read out, “Be, my, can, we, get, please, marry, will, you…”He paused.Looked down at the board.

“Go on,” Crowley urged.

“Marry,” Aziraphale said, reaching out to touch Crowley’s third M.Crowley subtly miracled two more tiles to the right letters, and placed them on an empty portion of the board.“Me,” Aziraphale whispered.

Very slowly, he set down the score pad on the table, got to his feet, and came to sit down on the couch with Crowley.“My dear,” he said softly, reaching out and taking both of Crowley’s hands.Crowley turned to face him, their knees bumping together, their shoulders brushing, their faces close.

“Are you asking…” Aziraphale said, and trailed off.

“Marry me?” Crowley blurted, and then blushed.“I mean.If you want.It’s a human thing, but I think it’s about time if you were interested— six thousand years, after all, and we’ve been, ngh, dating and whatever for almost six, and I—“

“Yes,” Aziraphale interrupted, slowly smiling.“Yes, my dear, I would love to marry you.”

“Yeah?” Crowley mumbled.

Aziraphale leaned in and gave him a gentle kiss.“Yes,” he said, and then pulled Crowley close.

Crowley relaxed into the hug with a giddy grin, clinging close.He dug the velvet box out of his pocket, pulling away just enough to present it to Aziraphale.Aziraphale gasped when he opened it to find two rings.“Oh, darling,” he whispered, delighted, and then looked up at Crowley with a bright smile.“Will you put one on me?”

With shaking hands and a wildly pounding heart Crowley slipped one of the rings onto Aziraphale’s finger.A thrill went through him at how _natural_ it looked, the gold band on Aziraphale’s finger.As though it had always been there.As though it _belonged_.

“Here we are,” Aziraphale said softly, taking Crowley’s hand, and slid the other ring on his finger.“Now we match.”

“Aziraphale,” Crowley breathed and then fell into his arms again, hugging him close.

“Of all ways to ask for my hand—“ Aziraphale said with a breathless laugh after a moment, and Crowley snorted into his fiancé’s shoulder.

“Hey, look…!”

“I do _so_ appreciate it, darling,” Aziraphale said.“Even if you did have to resort to cheating.”

“Ends justify the means?” Crowley asked with a cheeky grin, and Aziraphale kissed him on the tip of the nose.

“Only just this once.”He gave Crowley a stern look.“I _will_ be adding up the scores, though.”

Crowley couldn’t stop smiling.“Wouldn’t dream of stopping you.”

Aziraphale gave him a soppy, adoring look, cupping his face with both hands and kissing him.“You ridiculous serpent,” he said.“I do love you so.”

“Love you too, angel,” Crowley said.“Even if I have to _spell out_ how I want to be yours.”

Aziraphale rolled his eyes even as he smiled.“ _My_ ridiculous serpent.”

Crowley smiled back.“So,” he said, clearing the board with a snap and giving Aziraphale one last kiss for the time being.“Shall we play again?”

Aziraphale lit up.“Oh, yes!”Crowley watched fondly as he returned to his seat, setting up the game and drawing letters.

“I think I’ll go first,” Aziraphale said with a nod, and then carefully laid out I-L-O-V-E-U.

Crowley grinned.

**Author's Note:**

> Thanks for reading, I really hope you enjoyed! I'm [here](https://asideofourown.tumblr.com/) if that's something you're into


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